Who's here? Who's queer?

Welcome to the 2021 special edition of Intersectional Perspectives: Identity, Culture, and Society, entitled 'Who's Here? Who's Queer?’. In asking these two questions we are asking who feels they belong in LGBTQI+ spaces and who claims the language of queer. 1 This idea of belonging, and its related concept community, underpins the articles in this special issue. Theoretically we draw on the work of Vanessa May, who states that 'an individual's sense of belonging is affected by collectively negotiated understandings of who 'we' are and what 'we' stand for, and who gets excluded as the 'other''. As May highlights the notion of belonging contains within it the shadow of those that do not belong. A singular understanding of inclusion and exclusion of LGBTQI+ people does not fully account for greater nuance in relational elements of these experiences. Experiences of inclusion and exclusion are necessarily interpersonal, relational, and context-dependent. As such one's inclusion or exclusion depends both on an individual's embodied state, and the relations between individuals, contexts and other agents. Individuals' experiences of being included or excluded vary across settings and times, and a binary concept of inclusion or exclusion does not allow for this nuance.